Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/482

Any rationalist reading this would exclaim, “What a diseased mind. What a fantastic and unpleasant imagination. What monstrous and fantastic rationalizations this Mailer sets up to justify himself.” To which I would answer, “simply, dear old friend who is now an enemy, just tell me where the hell all this came from. Tell me why man is on earth, why there is life, why people are not rational when you know reason is most reasonable, why you want and even believe in a good society when you think people are insignificant, stupid, hopeless, cruel, and in need of order.”

In a sentence: I get these ideas from somewhere, something, be it myself or the universe, but these ideas have a psychological reality which one cannot ignore. For if one does, one enters philosophically into the most untenable position of all for the rational materialist, to wit, something (nonsense) has come out of nothing. And all rationalists believe in the conservation of matter, and the conservation of energy. One cannot be scientific if one does not believe this. So reason demands the mystical explanation. That in the one is found the other. That every Thing contains its Opposite.